Appsfire Launches ‘Brichter-San’, A Native Pull-To-Refresh Ad Unit

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Advertising tech company Appsfire is rolling out a new ad unit again! This time, it’s called Brichter-San, and it’s all about taking advantage of the load time when you pull to refresh.

These are native ads, but the content is automatically provided by Appsfire. Once again, Brichter-San seems to be mostly about app promotion. After implementing the ad unit, your app will automatically pull the ad name, icon and description from the company’s servers.

Here’s how it works. When you are in an app and swipe your finger down to pull to refresh, the app will show you a small ad above the usual loading wheel. It’s natively coded, so developers can customize this ad unit to make it look better in their apps.

In the background, the app will keep refreshing your content, just like it would when you pull to refresh. When your content is up to date, the ad won’t disappear, you have to hit the dismiss button.

If you tap on an ad, it works like Appsfire’s other ad units. The complete App Store description pops up with the description, screenshots and more. The UI is a replica of an App Store page. All of this happens without ever leaving the app.

The ad unit is called Brichter-San in tribute to Loren Brichter. Brichter developed Tweetie, one of the first popular Twitter clients on iOS. His app was so popular that Twitter acquired it — he invented the pull-to-refresh gesture as well.

Recently, many major mobile companies announced that they were launching mobile advertising networks, such as Twitter and Google with YouTube. Facebook should make an announcement soon as well.

Appsfire’s major challenge will be to compete with these heavyweights. It remains to be seen if the company can sign enough deals with advertising partners and developers to make these ad units a success.

Disclosure: Appsfire co-founder and CEO Ouriel Ohayon used to run TechCrunch France. I didn’t work for TechCrunch at the time, so we never worked together.

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OverviewAppsfire operates an advertising platform for application developers and advertisers.
Appsfire 4.1, released in 2013, is a free mobile app that helps users find relevant apps and app deals. It recommends apps based on a user’s declared taste, and provides search results by app name, developer, category, or need. Its users can also share their activity on Facebook and Twitter, and view what their …